Green Building: We are committed to lightening our environmental footprint. We’d like to share some of the things we’ve been doing to make our Cloverdale Location the greenest building yet.

Prior to 1980 this location was a service garage. In 1984 the current concrete block building was constructed. This location was most recently home to Tireland. We completely re-purposed this building and brought services up to current building codes. Much attention was paid to environmental considerations including doing a small soil remediation.

Tireland had an extensive mezzanine floor for tire storage constructed from dimensional lumber and plywood. This wood was removed and then used in the construction of the outside walls of the new Bottle Depot area and the large planter out front.

All of the lighting has been upgraded to the latest LED lighting systems. The main warehouse and bottle depot have intelligent daylight harvesting LED fixtures – we never have to turn the lights on or off. Controls are automated and set to adjust to ambient light levels and dim to 20% power when no one is working in the area. At night the lights are set to 0% power unless motion is detected, which will turn on the affected fixtures.

During business hours we operate with all doors wide open and have a full on southern exposure, now we can take advantage natural light and the fixtures will dim to maintain ambient light levels in areas that need it.

Additionally, all outdoor lights are LED. All lights are programmed to turn off at 11pm and switch over to motion detection floods to reduce light pollution.

All gas heaters have been decommissioned, there is no natural gas used on site. There are only 4 small baseboard heaters and a half tank water heater for the entire site. All hot water services are within 2 metres of the water tank.

Outside, our green building had the roof-mounted air conditioning system removed and a Light Pipe installed in its place to allow natural light into the staff lunchroom.

The large planter and landscaped areas of the site have been nature-scaped with native and native-hybrid plants. Bee hives have been placed on the roof at the east end of the site and pollinate not only our gardens, but the gardens of our neighbors as well.

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Previously the site had pest issues with pigeons. We have netted off the entire ceiling to prevent pigeons and starlings from nesting inside the building.

We are very proud of the results of our efforts. The resulting Green Building is light, clean and airy. The planter is quite stunning. And, we’re not done yet. We’ve got a few more surprises up our sleeves! Stay tuned to see what we are up to.

Regional Recycling Cloverdale is the newest member of our Regional Recycling family. We operate 8 public recycling facilities in Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, Abbotsford, Whistler and Nanaimo.